May 2021
Featuring...
MuseLetter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought; especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
Taking the Afghan Off Our Laps
We’ve sat there for 18 years, rocking back and forth, trying to ward off the chill of Afghanistan. Though there are mixed views across the board---politicians, military leaders, John and Jane Doe--- about getting our
butts out of that rocking chair. An apparatus designed for movement that oxymoronically stays put. Biden has now set a timeline for troop withdrawal, which has already begun. It is scheduled for completion on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 this year.
In support of his decision, he made a few obvious observations. Or at least what should be obvious.
“We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021. War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,"
"I am now the fourth American president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats," he went on. "I will not pass this responsibility to a fifth."
The three previous presidents, set withdrawal as a goal as well. But were never able to bring it off, for one one reason or another. Anticipating pushback on his decision, Biden offered a preemptory rebuttal to the "many who will loudly insist that diplomacy cannot succeed without a robust US military presence to stand as leverage." He went on.
"We gave that argument a decade. It's never proved effective. Not when we had 98,000 troops in Afghanistan, and not when we're down to a few thousand. Our diplomacy does not hinge on having boots in harm's way, US boots on the ground. We have to change that thinking. American troops shouldn't be used as a bargaining chip between warring parties in other countries."
I’m with Joe. A disclosure in December of 2019 unsealed the deal for me. The so called Afghanistan Papers. Here are some excerpts from the January 2020 MuseLetter on the issue.
We now learn just last month, unequivocally, what we might have expected. That the Afghanistan War has been fought with no clear objectives nor end game in sight. Nor even a sense of what would constitute victory, after 18 years and counting, through three administrations across both parties.
This revelation comes by way of 2,000 pages of over 400 interviews with top military brass, conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Which was released by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act (after a 3-year legal battle).
These so called “Afghanistan Papers,” are a not so thinly veiled reference to “The Pentagon Papers,” whistle-blown by Daniel Ellsberg almost fifty years ago.
On top of which, there’s this startling admission last month in an editorial piece by a woman named Lauren Kay Johnson, an Afghanistan veteran and writer, headlined...
I helped craft the official lies to sell the war in Afghanistan
A few startling admissions followed.
“… I witnessed the disconnect between what happened on the ground and the messages the public heard about it. As my team’s information operations officer, I played a direct role in crafting those messages….”
“…But my job wasn’t only to mislead the American public. Our information campaign extended to the Afghan people and to higher-ups within the American military itself…”
Sound familiar?
I'm amazed that given how stunning these revelations were, that this story went under the radar of electronic media. Of course, in December 2019 there was a little thing like a presidential impeachment that had gotten underway mid-month. And always, those bellicose Tweet storms to monitor. Still, a war is a pretty big deal. Though this one was not on the scale of Viet Nam or anything. Only 2,500 troops have died in Afghanistan. I guess that's a number we've felt we can live with.
345 Madison Avenue
Start with the first truest simple declarative sentence, that you know
Ernest Hemingway
The building in which I had my first job out of college is slated to be torn down.
This will be meaningless to you. Similarly, I doubt if a defining structure in your life that has since been demolished, will mean anything to me. Chances are, you are not even aware of its demise. Or really care. But it is like a death, isn’t it? Though one of bricks and mortar. Some get emotional about old cars. Especially their first. I tend to wax nostalgic over places that have been ripped from their very foundations.
345 Madison Avenue for me, represented a first step into adulthood. A passage that is not defined by age. Not really. But economics. Paying your own way. Standing on your own two feet. Making a commitment. Getting down to the business of life and making a living. Nose to the grindstone and all that jazz. I can almost feel Millennials who have returned to the nest, by choice or circumstance, wincing at this old fogey notion.
Amidst a zeitgeist stew of passion, turmoil, and hipness, I began a career at that address in 1968, at an ad agency called Dancer, Fitzgerald, Sample (DFS). A company that has long since been swallowed up by Saatchi & Saatchi. Which itself was later eaten whole by Publicis, a French whale of a company. The proverbial big fish/little fish story as told by the professionals in consumer persuasion.
Not long after beginning an ad biz career, I was schooled in the fine art of the two-hour lunch. One enhanced by the de riguer cocktail (or two) before getting down to the business at hand. No sipping of wimpy wine for us. On the dime of sales reps hawking magazines ads or TV time, of course. And every room was filled with swirls of smoke from cigarettes and cigars, intermingling with the nitrogen/oxygen compound, we call air. All those who watched the mega TV hit Mad Men, will be well aware of this mid-century niche of well-to-do white male privilege. But all that, was about people. This is about place. And oh, the places, literally and figuratively, a meandering mind will go. The seemingly insignificant things we remember. Yet of some implication when we ponder them a bit. Here’s one.
DFS is the last place where I worked, in which you could actually open a window. Corporations and other big business settings, have become hermitically sealed with piped in recycled air, eons ago. Not unlike that of an airplane. But opening windows wide, in a moment of spontaneity, was what we did that day. A late afternoon in October of ‘69. The “amazing” Mets, surrogates for New York assertiveness, had just won the World Series despite being heavy underdogs. And we threw torn paper, serving as make-shift confetti, out on to the street below in celebration. A particular expression of exuberance I have never quite experienced since.
We usually never pass such places again once we are far along in life’s river-rafting run. Especially after certain windows have long since been closed (to toss in another metaphor if I may). Most of us will leave behind, not only the faces, but the places we once knew. We move on. As I once did. Only unexpectedly, to one day return. And though transformed, I found at least a few places of a past intact. Tenements, that were aged even back then…the grade school I (and Alfred E. Smith) attended...familiar store fronts, albeit now
selling unfamiliar wares… the landmark church celebrating mass in a different dominant language. And I
have now often passed by 345 Madison Avenue in the course of going about my day. I don’t live far away.
From open windows and concocted confetti, to an almost freaky recall of names. While I often forget a name I should know from recent encounters, and titles of movies and books or the gist of a news article (“I just read something someplace where what’s his name said…I forgot what”), I can still remember the first and last names of 30 co-workers from that “345” address. From over 50 years ago! And with only having a worked-related contact with about a third of them. And that I was employed there for only a little less than three years.
I thought of this as I walked by that boarded up and scaffolded edifice. And it was as though being presented with tangible evidence of a time gone by, which I immediately captured on my cell phone. Unlike the evidence we see in our faces, wrinkles, sagging skin, aging spots, even through a scrim of demolition preparation, the façade of a building can look exactly as it did a half century ago. Even double that amount of time as this one did, it being built in 1921. Happy 100th birthday.
It’s as if present and past were in a state of co-existance. A scene out of Twilight Zone. I felt myself tearing up. While simultaneously wondering why. I certainly had no love for the place nor any of the people in it. “Like,” is about as far as it ever went. Still, there it was. Deemed useless. A relic out of time on an avenue of myth. To be replaced by high rise luxury residences, and possibly a hotel. Ensconced behind a soulless façade of glass. And in pausing to note a mortality of that of steel and stone, the message is daunting for we of flesh and bone. And wasn’t that really at the heart of going all misty-eyed that day last month?
Never knowing the route that an impulse will take me on any given day, I will no doubt pass the site on a few more occasions before it is reduced to a pile of rubble. The episode in lamentation having passed, it will be reduced to being just another New York construction site.
Quote of the Month
finito
A Post Presidency in Oils.
I was never a fan of the George W. Bush presidency, given his questionable policy decisions and dalliance when critical actions were needed to be taken with immediacy.
Then there was that good ole boy persona he projected that I found irksome. His easy dismissal of what he considered elitism. Though in competitors Gore, with his pomposity, and Kerry with his windsurfing, he found plenty of fodder for that dismissal. But I would go so far as to say that he gave short shrift (is there ever long shrift?), not only to those of highly schooled intelligence, but advanced education in general. Suddenly it was more than ok to be undereducated. And blue was the warmest collar color. Especially in red states.
No matter that he attended Phillips Academy, the most elite prep school in America. Or graduated from Yale with a Bachelor of Arts degree while a member of the highly secretive Skull and Bones Society (as was John Kerry). Or graduated with an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He was “one of us.” Jis plain folks.
Throughout his eight years in office, in no way, shape or form, did he ever champion appreciation for the arts, nor the process of their creation. So it was surprising to learn that in the fourth year of his post-presidency, at age 66, he began to take oil painting classes. He had never so much as ever picked up a brush before. Unless perhaps in a Huck Finn moment, using a broad one to paint a backyard fence? No one could see this coming. Not even Laura Bush.
In response to news anchor Nora O’Donnell’s question, “When your husband started painting, what did you think?” she replied, “I was shocked. He hadn’t even ever looked at art. I mean, we lived with a major American collection at the White House….No, he was not at all interested.”
And Dubya’s explanation?
“I had been an art-agnostic all my life.”
“By chance I read Winston Churchill’s essay, ‘Painting as a Pastime.’ And it got me thinking about painting. And in essence, I said, ‘If that old boy can paint, I can paint.’ And so I started.”
Upon his belated beginning, homespun as ever, he facetiously told his first teacher that he wanted her to discover his “inner Rembrandt.”
A couple of his early efforts were leaked to the public in 2013 when emails to his sister were hacked. And while the style of those first paintings may seem a bit flat, the subject matter is rather, well, intriguing. I won’t venture any speculation as to any psychological underpinnings regarding a new painter starting out with self nudes. In a bathroom no less. Or why you would email them to your sister? (I wonder if Jeb was cc’d?).
I’m always struck when certain presumptions are overturned. Especially my own. Where people emerge from the box you put them in. This bathroom verité showed a side of him, literally, I would never have expected. And as I’m a sucker for the arts, have once written a very short poem that begins...
without the arts
we are the ants:
heavy lifters of crumbs…
…I think Bush’s metamorphose from “antsy,” which he claimed to be in retirement, to “artsy,” is cool.
Interesting sidebar on that “toes’ painting up there on the right. While I would doubt that Bush was inspired by Frida Kahlo’s, What the Water Gave Me, they both wind up in the bathtub. Though Kahlo has thrown everything into hers but a rubber duck.
Bush’s art has improved since coming out of the bathroom. There's a vibrancy to it now. A personal observation backed up, from what I’ve read, by some art teachers and critics (e.g. artprof.org).
One reviewer noted that “Within the art community, many have warily admitted that Bush has a way with paint. He’s developed his style over the years, working with a string of artist teachers.” Five, for the record.
These Bush paintings to the right, alongside Freud's of the Queen, are in homage to veterans who are included in his book Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors that was published in 2017.
And as a further indication of commitment to his art, and obsession with his newly discovered inner self, he has immersed himself into the Museum of Modern Art collections. A specific goal being, to explore the development of painting from the 1800’s through 1945.
In particular to his own development, he might have been influenced by the work of Lucien Freud (1922-2011, Sigmund's grandson). A pretty heady influence, as Lucien is considered to be one of the most important figurative painters of the 20th centuries.
Another influence might have been Alice Neel (1900-1984), for whom there is a current retrospective showing at the Metropolitan Museum.
Alice Neel, 1964 George Bush, 2017
The New Yorker art critic at the time, Peter Schjeldahl, could hardly hide his surprise in describing the quality of Bush’s work as astonishingly high. And that the portraits were “honestly observed and persuasively alive.” And he too acknowledges that “Bush's artistic talent goes against the stereotype we have of him.”
Though others, while applauding the art, could not refrain from infusing it with hard-ass political critiques. One such read, “An evocative and surprisingly adept artist who has dramatically improved his technique while also doing penance for one of the greatest disasters in American history.”
Painting as penance for past sins? As a Catholic, penance usually consisted of abstinence and prayer. Which are hard to execute in oils. Or even in water colors for that matter.
I picked up a copy of his latest book published just a couple of weeks ago. This time around, he pays homage to 43 outstanding immigrants and the part they've played in shaping the American story. Brief essays toward this end are included, which could not help but add a sense of drama to the art itself.
“While Madelaine and I come from different parties, we have become friends. I respect her love of country and public service. She has generously joined Laura and me at Bush Institute events…”
We’ve never heard of most of these people. Though a few well-known names are interspersed, such as Henry Kissinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Albert Pujols (if you’re a baseball fan), and the first woman Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. To which he added these personal notes.
Can a portrait of Michelle Obama, to whom he gave an Altoid at John McCain’s funeral, be far behind?
A late bloomer. A feel good story. A surprise in style and substance. Mission accomplished! Heck of a job, Georgie.
Poets in Passing
Frost, refusing to die
just faded away.
No doubt from a life made softer
by swinging on birches
and observing mother cows
and listening in the woods to falling snow.
He indeed did go gently.
Unlike Dylan Thomas,
who drank himself under the hooves
of the White Horse Tavern.
Hart Crane lost heart
and went overboard
into the Gulf of Mexico.
Anne Sexton had the looks
of a 1940's movie star
till the cliched garage and running car.
Plath, though pretty, was pity personified.
Self-defiled,
she put herself to sleep nearby the children,
after leaving them cookies and milk of course.
It was just a matter of time ---
a small matter at that. In fact,
suicide for a poet might be said to be
death by natural causes.
Whereas Hemingway, of manly prose
blew out his brains of brawn
in a simple declarative sentence.
-
A Post-presidency in Oils
-
Poets in Passing
-
345 Madison Avenue
-
Quote of the Month
-
Taking the Afghan off Our Laps
"
"